The present disclosure relates to an image pickup apparatus making use of a lens array.
In the past, a variety of image pickup apparatus have been developed and proposed as described in Ren. Ng and 7 other authors, “Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera,” Stanford Tech Report CTSR 2005-02, hereinafter referred to as Non-patent Document 1. In addition, there has been proposed an image pickup apparatus for carrying out predetermined image processing on the data of a taken image and outputting the result of the image processing. For example, as described in Non-patent Document 1, there has been proposed an image pickup apparatus adopting an image taking technique referred to as the Light Field Photography. This image pickup apparatus has a lens array provided between an image pickup lens and an image sensor also referred to hereafter as an image pickup device. To be more specific, the lens array is provided on the focal plane of the image pickup lens. Thus, a video picture created on the lens array as the video picture of an image taking object is received as light separated into light beams propagating in a plurality of viewpoint directions, allowing images at several viewpoints to be obtained at the same time.